The DSL Forum (i.e., a consortium of leading industry players covering telecommunications, equipment, computing, networking and service provider companies) develops and maintains a set of standards for remote management of devices (e.g., customer premises equipment (CPE) or local area network (LAN) devices, such as set-top boxes and voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) telephones) provided in customer homes. One standard (e.g., TR-069) discusses remote management of CPE via protocols used for communication between CPE and an auto-configuration server (ACS). The ACS may provide secure auto-configuration, as well as other CPE management functions within a common framework.
Another standard (e.g., TR-111) extends the protocols for remote management of CPE to allow a management system to more easily access and manage devices connected via a LAN (i.e., LAN devices) through an Internet gateway device (e.g., a home router). Currently, Part 2 of TR-111 defines the use of Simple Traversal of User Datagram Protocol (UDP) Through Network Address Translators (NATs) (STUN) (e.g., as set forth by The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) in RFC 3489). STUN is mainly used as a mechanism to provide a connection request operation (e.g., initiated by an ACS, such as, a remote network management system) a way to reach a device attached to a NAT-enabled gateway device.